Berkeley
I was in Berkeley for Halloween and had a nice time.
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Dudeney's 536-puzzle collection has an interesting problem about an analog clock. (I don't think digital clocks even existed when Dudeney wrote the problem.) Suppose you have a clock with identical hour and minute hands. Some times are unambiguous. For example, if you see one hand pointing directly to the right and one hand pointing directly up, you know it is 3:00; there is no other interpretation possible. (It can't be that the hand pointing straight up is the hour hand, because it would have to be 1/4 past the hour, whereas in that impossible interpretation it is right on the hour.) Dudeney asks what the first time after midnight when an ambiguity occurs will be -- when you can't tell what time it is by looking at the clock.
I haven't solved this yet, but I did discover precisely when all the times are at which the hour and minute hands co-incide. Of course, this happens 13 times from midnight until noon (including both midnight and noon), because the minute hand will have to cross the hour hand once each hour. The first of these times after midnight is 1 hour and 1/11th hour past midnight (around 1:05:45).
I finished Eichmann in Jerusalem on Saturday. (I lost my original copy in L.A. last week, so I had to buy a new copy to finish the book.) The Holocaust in Eichmann in Jerusalem is a lot more subtle and complex than the Holocaust I had heard of before -- for example, take the "deportations" sections, with their discussions of various countries' responses to Nazi requests. You might have thought that, roughly speaking, other European countries, when asked by Nazi Germany, largely all rounded up their Jews right away and shipped them off to concentration camps (with the exception of Denmark, right?).
But the countries actually exhibited a bewildering variety of behaviors in response to the German demands. Some complied eagerly, some dragged their feet, some (not just Denmark) resisted, and one, Arendt says, was so zealous in killing Jews that the Nazis actually intervened to get them to tone it down a little. The factors that went into these decisions were incredibly many and directly affected who lived and who died.
This is just one of the complexities Arendt raises in her account of the Eichmann trial.
What I would like to do now is finish my essay about my visit to the House of the Wannsee Conference and post it together with my pictures of the same.
Seth: I don't really know much about Wesley Clarrrrk, other than that he is a general.Riana: You mean that you have only a general knowledge of him?
I got to see Annalee for the first time since she got back from her year at MIT. Welcome back, Annalee!
I really like William Wu's riddle site. A lot of the riddles are classics (things you might find in Gardner or Dudeney) and a lot are really straight CS problems, but the whole is full of great stuff. I enjoyed figuring out "Sink the Sub":
An enemy submarine is somewhere on the number line (consider only integers for this problem). It is moving at some rate (again, integral units per minute). You know neither its position nor its velocity.You can launch a torpedo each minute at any integer on the number line. If the the submarine is there, you hit it and it sinks. You have all the time and torpedoes you want. You must sink this enemy sub - devise a strategy that is guaranteed to eventually hit the enemy sub.
I got to hear a Noe Venable concert at the Great American Music Hall on Tuesday (the second time I've heard her perform there). I was hoping to get dinner beforehand at Golden Era, but they were closed (perhaps for Veterans Day/Armistice Day), so I went to the Tenderloin Pakwan instead. Sad to say, nobody joined me, but I still had a nice time. Noe is remarkably talented, and I feel fortunate to have become a fan.
I'm putting in a request for a new feral cat dream pillow because we used my original one successfully to catch a real live feral kitten who was living in the EFF office. (The dream pillow contains catnip; the kitten was a fan.)
The kitten is now named Midnight and is living (happily, we hope) at a staff member's home. The pillow is in need of replacement.
A homeless veteran sold me a newspaper and pointed out that it was Veterans Day. Then he started to tell me some stories about Vietnam. His mother had apparently threatened him: "If you get killed in Vietnam, I'll kill you!" He attributed his survival to his terror of his mother's retribution.
The veteran also suggested that I call my father to tell him I was proud of him, if my father had been a Vietnam veteran. In fact, my father was a Vietnam-era antiwar activist and alternative-service CO. I am proud of him, and I will call him to tell him so.
I know some people in the Armed Forces: the several alums of my high school who went off to the United States Naval Academy each year, and Eric's brother Scott, who is an activated Army reservist. If I knew how to get in touch with any of them, I would let them know that I'm hoping for their safety.
I had a good time giving my trusted computing talk at the SDForum security SIG in Mountain View. I spoke right after Whit Diffie, went on for a long time, and got a variety of interesting questions (though questions fairly similar to the ones I'd gotten by e-mail after the publication of Trusted Computing: Promise and Risk).
Co-incidentally, "Give TCPA an Owner Override" is now available on-line, or in print in the December Linux Journal.
Now I know how to make a Thai curry. I used this recipe I found with a Google search. (I added basil, baby corn, chili pepper, and bamboo shoots.) I've made this curry twice, and it's good.
I never understood cooking with coconut milk before. It seems that it's not a good idea to make the coconut milk boil.
I have often heard that erasing (not storing) data is what unavoidably consumes energy. I never heard quite so picturesque an explanation of why as this one, seen on slashdot:
For example, when a computer erases something, what it does physically is ground one part of a circuit that holds a charge, in effect converting the stored energy -- and the information it represents -- into heat, Frank said. When chips perform millions or billions of erasing and other operations in a short time, the total heat becomes substantial, limiting both the performance of the chip and the number of chips that can be packed together in a small space, he said.
I am still troubled that CodeCon continues to discriminate against attendees on the basis of age. I want to know: What is CodeCon doing to try to find an age-neutral venue?
I disapprove of the routinization of identification, and I disapprove of age discrimination. I'm saddened but not surprised when corporate event producers encourage age discrimination and ID demands (they have paranoid lawyers who advise them in the service of increasing shareholder value to the exclusion of all other values). But I am surprised when world-renowned activists for anonymity and privacy continue to choose venues for their own events that exclude minors and that demand government ID.
SDForum, where I spoke Wednesday, didn't ask for ID (despite being held inside a corporation's offices!). SVLUG, where I've spoken twice before, didn't ask for ID (despite being held inside another corporation's offices). BALUG, where I've also spoken twice before, didn't ask for ID (despite being held in a restaurant where alcoholic drinks are served). DEF CON doesn't ask for ID. Computers, Freedom, and Privacy doesn't ask for ID (although a conference hotel recently made the mistake of asking CFP guests for ID to stay there). HOPE (etc.) don't ask for ID. CCC doesn't ask for ID. Several conferences on telecommunications policy I've attended recently didn't ask for ID (despite the presence at the conferences of actual civil servants who have made extremely unpopular political decisions). The student-organized conference at the University of Illinois where I spoke two weeks ago didn't ask for ID. Some of these events are smaller and lower-budget than CodeCon. All of them have somehow succeeded in finding venues accessible to the general public.
What is CodeCon doing to try to find such a venue?
I went with Ren and Laura to hear Brian Eno speak at Fort Mason on Friday. He spoke well about the Long Now and played a little of his music.
I filled out a guest comment card and now an on-line survey to let the Four Points Sheraton LAX know that I will try to use a different hotel in the future because they made me show government-issued photo ID in order to check in.
I recommend that other people also avoid this hotel for this reason.
I still feel guilty for carrying government ID at all. I really believe that this decision on my part is causing externalities that harm the public. I would like to write about that in connection with trusted computing (because the problems are closely related, from a certain perspective), but the trouble is that very few readers may have a strongly negative view of ID cards. If they don't agree that ID cards are problematic, an analogy between attestation and ID cards could be unhelpful (or even counterproductive) for describing why attestation might be problematic. It might be ignotum per ignotiora.
"How can being able to prove what's true harm me?"
A colleague in Miami says "it's a police-state down here" (in connection with the FTAA meeting).
On November 21, 1993, about 1356 hours eastern standard time, a Piper PA-28-161, N3011F, collided with a free-falling parachutist while in cruise flight over the Northampton Airport, Northampton, Massachusetts. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain during an uncontrolled descent and was destroyed. The certificated private pilot and the three passengers were fatally injured, and the parachutist received serious injuries.
Jonas Klein died ten years ago today. I am writing a book, so I will finally get to use the dedication I wrote a very long time ago.
Briefly, Jonas was a gifted and curious technologist and steersman who touched the lives of many people who met him or (as I did) only spoke to him. He was also a master at spreading enthusiasms. It happens that he was the first person to explain to me how the Internet works.
Does anyone know Jonas's birthday? I would like to be able to use it in my dedication.
Wolfgang has been writting a weekly column in the California Aggie.
I used the Social Security Death Index to find that Jonas Klein's birthday was August 16, 1975. I think my dedication is finally complete -- now I just have to finish the accompanying book.
How did we know the president of the MPAA was wrong when he said the VCR would destroy the movie industry?
Because, as the saying goes, Valenti non fit iniuria.
I filed our ARDG comments, containing a brief discussion of the process of hiding watermarks from detectors without actually removing the watermarks. I allude to the fact that analog encryption (including encryption schemes that don't expand bandwidth or dynamic range) was well-developed in the past. Today it seems out of date because digital encryption is so much more efficient, but the old analog encryption techniques could find new life if many devices start looking for watermarks.
The ARDG comments should be up on EFF's web site after the Thanksgiving weekend, and also included in the ARDG report early next year.
Contact: Seth David Schoen